Marketing Daily: Kraft Heinz Promos Leverage Shopper ‘Agents,’ Near-Field Tech

On November 19, 2019, Steve Ellwanger of Marketing Daily interviewed Shaun Stigall, Identiv Director of Strategic Accounts, about the role of Identiv’s near field communication (NFC) tags in Kraft Heinz’ “Find the KRAFT Golden Single” intelligent instant redeemable coupon (IRC) customer reward experience.  

Here’s an excerpt:

NFC is a short-range, wireless connectivity standard that enables two devices to communicate when touched together or brought within close proximity. “Nearly every smartphone made today has a world standard NFC reader built-in,” Shaun Stigall, director of strategic accounts at global security provider Identiv, tells Marketing Daily.

In September, Kraft Heinz embedded Identiv NFC tags into instant-redeemable coupon labels carrying the notation “tap here for recipes” on packages of Kraft Singles in Walmart stores. People who tap the label with their phone activate the NFC technology, which opens their default web browser to display recipes.

After a purchase of Kraft Singles, opening the package activates a second NFC-enabled experience in which buyers can play a scratch-and-win style mobile game with the potential to win a $50 Walmart e-gift card.

“So far, Walmart has provided Kraft cheese with premium floor space in the stores due to the NFC features and increased the number of stores that the promotion was in,” says Stigall. “Early results show a correlation between stores with increased sales lift in the product and the stores that featured the NFC program.”

Asked about the use of NFC instead of QR codes for promotions, Stigall notes that QR codes “are easily faked and can be used to launch fake mobile websites.” In addition, each NFC chip has its own code that “brands can identify and launch a unique experience for each individual package” based on time of day, store location, phone type and other NFC programming rules.

Read the complete story from Marketing Daily.